Original paper: [ Ссылка ]

Title: Time-resolved optical shadowgraphy of solid hydrogen jets as a testbed to benchmark particle-in-cell simulations

Authors: Long Yang, Lingen Huang, Stefan Assenbaum, Thomas E Cowan, Ilja Goethel, Sebastian Göde, Thomas Kluge, Martin Rehwald, Xiayun Pan, Ulrich Schramm, Jan Vorberger, Karl Zeil, Tim Ziegler, Constantin Bernert

Abstract:
Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are a superior tool to model kinetics-dominated plasmas in relativistic and ultrarelativistic laser-solid interactions , where correlated and collisional plasma physics become relevant, is reaching the limits of available modeling capabilities. This calls for theoretical and experimental benchmarks and the establishment of standardized testbeds. In this work, we develop such a suitable testbed to experimentally benchmark PIC simulations using a laser-irradiated micron-sized cryogenic hydrogen-jet target. Time-resolved optical shadowgraphy of the expanding plasma density, complemented by hydrodynamics and ray-tracing simulations, is used to determine the bulk-electron temperature evolution after laser irradiation. As a showcase, a study of isochoric heating of solid hydrogen induced by laser pulses with a dimensionless vectorpotential of $a_0 \approx 1$ is presented. The comparison of the bulk-electron temperature of the experiment with systematic scans of PIC simulations demostrates that, due to an interplay of vacuum heating and resonance heating of electrons, the initial surface-density gradient of the target is decisive to reach quantitative agreement at \SI{1}{\ps} after the interaction. The showcase demostrates the readiness of the testbed for controlled parameter scans at all laser intensities of $a_0 \lesssim 1$.

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